After halting trade an hour early on Monday, seeing and seeing Wednesday trade halted at midday, amidst a wave of selling, the RTS and Micex remain closed for normal trade on Thursday.
The Micex has resumed limited trade at 11 AM Moscow time, on the approval from the Federal Financial Markets Service, aimed at clearing the repo backlog. Overnight Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin discussed with U.S. Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke, and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson measures to help ease the global credit crisis. Overnight on Wall Street the Dow Jones fell by more than 4%, and this has continued through exchanges in the Asia Pacific region on Thursday trade, with the Nikkei in Tokyo and the ASX in Sydney both down more than 2% at the close, Hong Kong down more than 3% in afternoon trade, and Shanghai down 1.7% in afternoon trade.